Tuesday, December 10, 2013

Cafeteria America

Havana, ca. 1955

During a recent visit to Havana, I hailed a taxi (a 1958 Ford) and rumbled over to the Plaza de Armas to look for some old menus. Every day dozens of private booksellers set up their stalls in this leafy square, selling used books, random pieces of ephemera, and souvenir photographs taken in famous nightclubs like the Tropicana during its heyday. There are also some unusual books dating back to the nineteenth century. One such rarity that caught my eye was a finely-bound volume containing copies of Frank’s Illustrated Weekly for the month of July 1870. As tempting as it was, I decided not to purchase this treasure, preferring to stay focused on my mission to find historical evidence of Cuban influence on the foodways of the United States, or conversely, the spread of American culture abroad. And as luck would have it, I soon discovered a menu from the Cafeteria America. Coming from the period just before the revolution in 1959, it illustrated the simple pleasures of everyday life once enjoyed by the middle- and upper-classes in Cuba.

The Cafeteria America was a coffee shop (called a “cafeteria” in Spanish) and bakerythat operated in the America Building. Located on the corner of Galiano and Neptune streets in the Vedado section of Havana, this eleven-story edifice opened in 1941, featuring the symmetrical lines and elegant forms of Art Deco design. Thecomplex contained sixty-four residential apartments, several businesses on the ground floor, and an 1800-seat theater described as a small version of Radio City Music Hall.

The menu below appears in Spanish and English. In addition to typical American dishes, the bill of fare includes a few local specialties, such as malted shakes made with tropical fruits like mamey and cherimoya. There are also two kinds of croquettes and a turkey sandwich called an “Elena Russ.” Commonly spelled “Ruz” or “Ruiz” today, this iconic Cuban sandwich was supposedly christened after a society debutante who whimsically ordered one in the 1930s at El Carmelo, a late-night restaurant where she and her friends went after a dance. It is made by smearing a generous portion of cream cheese on a piece of white toast, strawberry preserves on the other, and assembling it with slices of turkey in the middle. The Cafeteria America was also a late-night haunt, as evidenced by a ham sandwich called a Middle Night, or Medias Noches, suggesting that it was generally consumed as an after-theater snack. The proprietor was Liy Leng, a Chinese-Cuban whosename is prominently shown on the first page.

Travel writer Paul Theroux observed that “nothing induces concentration or stimulates memory like an alien landscape or a foreign culture.” Cuba, with its ancient automobiles and crumbling architecture, easily fits within these parameters, turning a trip there into a thought-provoking experience. Unlike most major cities, Havana has made few additions to its skyline over the last fifty-five years and many of its edifices are now disintegrating; restoration projects proceed at a painfully slow pace, if at all. Still, the animal spirits of capitalism are beginning to stir on the island nation, and while this awakening may be less robust than one observed in China thirty years ago, economic reforms could be enacted more quickly than some expect, for as the Bolshevik leader Vladimir Lenin once remarked, “There are decades where nothing happens; and there are weeks where decades happen.”

The Elena Russ is a new one for me. At first the strawberry jam struck a discordant note, but when you think of it, not really: surely it's a counterpart to cranberry in its role as soul mate to turkey.

The sandwich in part resembles the Louisville Hot Brown, of which there was a cold version, whose origins connect also the social set looking for an early morning fillip. I would think something connects the two dishes, probably the deb circuit then included Cuba and perhaps Ms. Elena Russ picked up the idea through U.S. friends.

Welcome

The menu did not exist until the late 1830s. It came into being along with the earliest hotels and restaurants, at a time when service à la russe—the serving of dishes in courses rather than all at once—was growing in popularity. For the first time, diners were granted choice and anticipation.

Menus aid our cultural memory. They provide unwitting historical evidence—not only of what people were eating, but what they were doing and with whom they were doing it; who they were trying to be; and what they valued. Deciphering the particular story behind each menu requires great sleuth-work. That’s what I'll be undertaking on this website.

My collection of menus illustrates the evolution of American culture, beginning in the mid-19th century. It contains bills of fare from a wide variety of venues, ranging from restaurants and hotels to various private organizations, military units, steamships, and trains. From the beginning, the menu has been an art form. Some were beautifully crafted by leading stationers to celebrate special events. Others simply expressed the whimsy of everyday life.

Even when saved as personal souvenirs, menus were frequently discarded by subsequent generations for whom they had no value or special meaning. As with other types of ephemera, one aspect of their appeal lies within the notion of their improbable survival.

Viewing the Menus

Scroll over images for photo credits. Click on the picture to enlarge the image.

About Me

Collecting menus reflects my interests in food, wine, art, culture, and history. I am a member of the Delaware Bibliophiles and the Library Company of Philadelphia, and am currently serving on the board of the Ephemera Society. You can contact me at Henry.B.Voigt [at] gmail.com